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Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

-Bertrand Russell

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Dr. Arnold . .

Bertrand Russell

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Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

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Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

In Democratic Countries, The Most Important Private Organizations Are Economic. Unlike Secret Societies, They Are Able To Exercise Their Terrorism Without Illegality, Since They Do Not Threaten To Kill Their Enemies, But Only To Starve Them.

Well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.

Those Who Advocate Common Usage In Philosophy Sometimes Speak In A Manner That Suggests The Mystique Of The 'common Man.'

The Teacher, Like The Artist, The Philosopher, And The Man Of Letters, Can Only Perform His Work Adequately If He Feels Himself To Be An Individual Directed By An Inner Creative Impulse, Not Dominated And Fettered By An Outside Authority.

I Believe That When I Die I Shall Rot, And Nothing Of My Ego Will Survive.

What We Cannot Think We Cannot Think, Therefore We Also Cannot Say What We Cannot Think.

All The Labor Of All The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction. So Now, My Friends, If That Is True, And It Is True, What Is The Point?

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity.

I Think We Ought Always To Entertain Our Opinions With Some Measure Of Doubt. I Shouldn't Wish People Dogmatically To Believe Any Philosophy, Not Even Mine.

Any Philosophy Worth Taking Seriously Would Have To Be Built Upon A Firm Foundation Of Unyielding Despair.

We Are Faced With The Paradoxical Fact That Education Has Become One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence And Freedom Of Thought.

Many Orthodox People Speak As Though It Were The Business Of Sceptics To Disprove Received Dogmas Rather Than Of Dogmatists To Prove Them. This Is, Of Course, A Mistake.

Your Writing Is Never As Good As You Hoped; But Never As Bad As You Feared.

Ideas And Principles That Do Harm Are As A Rule, Though Not Always, Cloaks For Evil Passions.

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

It Is Odd That Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point. At What Point Sin Begins Is A Matter As To Which Casuists Differ. One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent. But I Doubt Whether Modern Authorities Would Agree With Him On This Point.

The Secret Of Happiness Is This: Let Your Interests Be As Wide As Possible, And Let Your Reactions To The Things And Persons That Interest You Be As Far As Possible Friendly Rather Than Hostile.

All Definite Knowledge - So I Should Contend - Belongs To Science; All Dogma As To What Surpasses Definite Knowledge Belongs To Theology. But Between Theology And Science There Is A No Man's Land, Exposed To Attack By Both Sides; This No Man's Land Is Philosophy.

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

It's Coexistence Or No Existence.

There Are Two Ways Of Avoiding Fear: One Is By Persuading Ourselves That We Are Immune From Disaster, And The Other Is By The Practice Of Sheer Courage. The Latter Is Difficult, And To Everybody Becomes Impossible At A Certain Point. The Former Has Therefore Always Been More Popular. Primitive Magic Has The Purpose Of Securing Safety, Either By Injuring Enemies, Or By Protecting Oneself By Talismans, Spells, Or Incantations.

It Is A Waste Of Energy To Be Angry With A Man Who Behaves Badly, Just As It Is To Be Angry With A Car That Won't Go.

Be Isolated, Be Ignored, Be Attacked, Be In Doubt, Be Frightened, But Do Not Be Silenced.

Love, Children, And Work, Are The Great Sources Of Fertilizing Contact Between The Individual And The Rest Of The World.

Africans Had To Be Taught That Nudity Is Wicked; This Was Done Very Cheaply By Missionaries.

Calculus Required Continuity, And Continuity Was Supposed To Require The Infinitely Little; But Nobody Could Discover What The Infinitely Little Might Be.

The Great Majority Of Men And Women, In Ordinary Times, Pass Through Life Without Ever Contemplating Or Criticising, As A Whole, Either Their Own Conditions Or Those Of The World At Large.

The Observer, When He Seems To Himself To Be Observing A Stone, Is Really, If Physics Is To Be Believed, Observing The Effects Of The Stone Upon Himself.

If We Compare Europe With Other Continents, It Is Marked Out As [another] Persecuting Continent.

An Educator Should Think Of A Child As A Gardener Thinks Of A Plant, As Something To Be Made To Grow By Having The Right Soil And The Right Amount Of Water. If Your Roses Fail To Bloom, It Does Not Occur To You To Whip Them, But You Try To Find Out What Has Been Amiss In Your Treatment Of Them. ... The Important Thing Is What The Children Do, And Not What They Do Not Do. And What They Do, If It Is To Have Value, Must Be A Spontaneous Expression Of Their Own Vital Energy.

It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results.

Every Living Thing Is A Sort Of Imperialist, Seeking To Transform As Much As Possible Of Its Environment Into Itself.

Intelligence, It Might Be Said, Has Caused Our Troubles; But It Is Not Unintelligence That Will Cure Them. Only More And Wiser Intelligence Can Make A Happier World

Mathematics Is, I Believe, The Chief Source Of The Belief In Eternal And Exact Truth, As Well As A Sensible Intelligible World.

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster.

A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If Indeed Such A Man Exists.

Patriotism Is The Willingness To Kill And Be Killed For Trivial Reasons.

Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

When White Men First Effect Contact With Some Unspoilt Race Of Savages, They Offer Them All Kinds Of Benefits, From The Light Of The Gospel To Pumpkin Pie. These, However, Much As We May Regret It, Most Savages Receive With Indifference. What They Really Value Among The Gifts That We Bring To Them Is Intoxicating Liquor Which Enables Them, For The First Time In Their Lives, To Have The Illusion For A Few Brief Moments That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead.

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death.

Modern Technique Has Made It Possible For Leisure, Within Limits, To Be Not The Prerogative Of Small Privileged Classes, But A Right Evenly Distributed Throughout The Community. The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

The Man Who Only Loves Beautiful Things Is Dreaming, Whereas The Man Who Knows Absolute Beauty Is Wide Awake.

Religion Is Based ... Mainly Upon Fear ... Fear Of The Mysterious, Fear Of Defeat, Fear Of Death. Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand In Hand. My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

Those Who Forget Good And Evil And Seek Only To Know The Facts Are More Likely To Achieve Good Than Those Who View The World Through The Distorting Medium Of Their Own Desires.

Religion: A Set Of Beliefs Held As Dogmas, Dominating The Conduct Of Life, Going Beyond Or Contrary To Evidence, And Inculcated By Methods Which Are Emotional Or Authoritarian, Not Intellectual.

I Do Not Believe That Science Per Se Is An Adequate Source Of Happiness, Nor Do I Think That My Own Scientific Outlook Has Contributed Very Greatly To My Own Happiness, Which I Attribute To Defecating Twice A Day With Unfailing Regularity.

Curious Learning Not Only Makes Unpleasant Things Less Unpleasant But Also Makes Pleasant Things More Pleasant.

There Seems Scarcely Any Limit To What Could Be Done In The Way Of Producing A Good World, If Only Men Would Use Science Wisely.

Power, Like Vanity, Is Insatiable. Nothing Short Of Omnipotence Could Satisfy It Completely.

All Serious Innovation Is Only Rendered Possible By Some Accident Enabling Unpopular Persons To Survive.

Philosophy Seems To Me On The Whole A Rather Hopeless Business.

Man Needs, For His Happiness, Not Only The Enjoyment Of This Or That, But Hope And Enterprise And Change.

In Former Days, Men Sold Themselves To The Devil To Acquire Magical Powers. Nowadays They Acquire Those Powers From Science, And Find Themselves Compelled To Become Devils. There Is No Hope For The World Unless Power Can Be Tamed, And Brought Into The Service, Not Of This Or That Group Of Fanatical Tyrants, But Of The Whole Human Race, White And Yellow And Black, Fascist And Communist And Democrat; For Science Has Made It Inevitable That All Must Live Or All Must Die.

Education, And The Life Of The Mind Generally, Is A Matter In Which Individual Initiative Is The Chief Thing Needed; The Function Of The State Should Begin And End With Insistence On Some Kind Of Education, And, If Possible, A Kind Which Promotes Mental Individualism, Not A Kind Which Happens To Conform To The Prejudices Of Government Officials.

Heretical Views Arise When The Truth Is Uncertain, And It Is Only When The Truth Is Uncertain That Censorship Is Invoked.

The First Dogma Which I Came To Disbelieve Was That Of Free Will. It Seemed To Me That All Notions Of Matter Were Determined By The Laws Of Dynamics And Could Not Therefore Be Influenced By Human Wills.

The Frequency With Which A Man Experiences Lust Depends Upon His Own Physical Condition, Whereas The Occasion Which Rouse Such Feelings In Him Depend Upon The Social Conventions To Which He Is Accustomed

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other's Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be To Dissolve All Friendships.

Friendship Love

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

Tobacco . . . Is Not Prohibited In The Scriptures, Though, As Samuel Butler Points Out, St. Paul Would No Doubt Have Denounced It If He Had Known Of It.

What Will Be The Good Of The Conquest Of Leisure And Health, If No One Remembers How To Use Them?

Passive Acceptance Of The Teacher's Wisdom Is Easy To Most Boys And Girls. It Involves No Effort Of Independent Thought, And Seems Rational Because The Teacher Knows More Than His Pupils; It Is Moreover The Way To Win The Favour Of The Teacher Unless He Is A Very Exceptional Man. Yet The Habit Of Passive Acceptance Is A Disastrous One In Later Life. It Causes Man To Seek And To Accept A Leader, And To Accept As A Leader Whoever Is Established In That Position.

Among Human Beings, The Subjection Of Women Is Much More Complete At A Certain Level Of Civilization Than It Is Among Savages. And The Subjection Is Always Reinforced By Morality.

Belief In God And A Future Life Makes It Possible To Go Through Life With Less Of Stoic Courage Than Is Needed By Skeptics.

Politics Is Largely Governed By Sententious Platitudes Which Are Devoid Of Truth

If Life Is To Be Fully Human It Must Serve Some End Which Seems, In Some Sense, Outside Human Life, Some End Which Is Impersonal And Above Mankind, Such As God Or Truth Or Beauty. Those Who Best Promote Life Do Not Have Life For Their Purpose. They Aim Rather At What Seems Like A Gradual Incarnation, A Bringing Into Our Human Existence Of Something Eternal, Something That Appears To Imagination To Live In A Heaven Remote From Strife And Failure And The Devouring Jaws Of Time.

An Atheist, Like A Christian, Holds That We Can Know Whether Or Not There Is A God. The Christian Holds That We Can Know There Is A God; The Atheist, That We Can Know There Is Not. The Agnostic Suspends Judgment, Saying That There Are Not Sufficient Grounds Either For Affirmation Or For Denial. At The Same Time, An Agnostic May Hold That The Existence Of God, Though Not Impossible, Is Very Improbable; He May Even Hold It So Improbable That It Is Not Worth Considering In Practice. In That Case, He Is Not Far Removed From Atheism.

Mankind Is Divided Into Two Classes: Those Who, Being Artificial, Praise Nature, And Those Who, Being Natural, Praise Art.

It's Not What You Have Lost, But What You Have Left That Counts.

The Church No Longer Contends That Knowledge Is In Itself Sinful, Though It Did So In Its Palmy Days; But The Acquisition Of Knowledge, Even Though Not Sinful, Is Dangerous, Since It May Lead To Pride Of Intellect, And Hence To A Questioning Of The Christian Dogma.

Few People Can Be Happy Unless They Hate Some Other Person, Nation, Or Creed.

Answering Questions Is A Major Part Of Sex Education. Two Rules Cover The Ground. First, Always Give A Truthful Answer To A Question; Secondly, Regard Sex Knowledge As Exactly Like Any Other Knowledge.

Philosophy, From The Earliest Times, Has Made Greater Claims, And Achieved Fewer Results, Than Any Other Branch Of Learning.

The Institution Of Representative Government To Us Seems An Essential Part Of Democracy, But The Ancients Never Thought Of It. Its Immense Merit Was That It Enabled A Large Constituency To Exert Indirect Power, And Thus Made Possible The Distribution Of Political Responsibility Throughout The Great States Of Modern Times.

With Equal Passion I Have Sought Knowledge. I Have Wished To Understand The Hearts Of Men. I Have Wished To Know Why The Stars Shine. And I Have Tried To Apprehend The Pythagorean Power By Which Number Holds Sway About The Flux. A Little Of This, But Not Much, I Have Achieved.

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

Faith: A Firm Belief For Which There Is No Evidence.

Unless You Assume A God, The Question Of Life's Purpose Is Meaningless.

When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man.

Change Is Scientific; Progress Is Ethical; Change Is Indubitable, Whereas Progress Is A Matter Of Controversy.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid, And However Unpleasant The Truth May Be, It Is Better To Face It Once And For All, To Get Used To It, And To Proceed To Build Your Life In Accordance With It.

Great God In Boots! – The Ontological Argument Is Sound!

Love Should Be A Tree Whose Roots Are Deep In The Earth, But Whose Branches Extend Into Heaven.

Respectability, Regularity, And Routine - The Whole Cast-iron Discipline Of A Modern Industrial Society - Have Atrophied The Artistic Impulse, And Imprisoned Love So That It Can No Longer Be Generous And Free And Creative, But Must Be Either Stuffy Or Furtive.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation ... It Is Common To Wish Well To Oneself, But In Our Technically Unified World, Wishing Well To Oneself Is Sure To Be Futile Unless It Is Combined With Wishing Well To Others.

At First It Seems Obvious, But The More You Think About It The Stranger The Deductions From This Axiom Seem To Become; In The End You Cease To Understand What Is Meant By It.

Obscenity Is Whatever Happens To Shock Some Elderly And Ignorant Magistrate.

I Find It So Difficult Not To Hate, When I Do Not Hate I Feel We Few Are So Lonely In The World

To Expect A Personality To Survive The Disintegration Of The Brain Is Like Expecting A Cricket Club To Survive When All Of Its Members Are Dead.

To Be Able To Fill Leisure Intelligently Is The Last Product Of Civilization, And At Present Very Few People Have Reached This Level.

More Cranks Take Up Unfashionable Errors Than Unfashionable Truths.

Ethical Metaphysics Is Fundamentally An Attempt, However Disguised, To Give Legislative Force To Our Own Wishes.

I Say People Who Feel They Must Have A Faith Or Religion In Order To Face Life Are Showing A Kind Of Cowardice, Which In Any Other Sphere Would Be Considered Contemptible. But When It Is In The Religious Sphere It Is Thought Admirable, And I Cannot Admire Cowardice Whatever Sphere It Is In.

I Believe In Using Words, Not Fists. I Believe In My Outrage Knowing People Are Living In Boxes On The Street. I Believe In Honesty. I Believe In A Good Time. I Believe In Good Food. I Believe In Sex.

The First Essential Character [of Civilization], I Should Say, Is Forethought. This, Indeed, Is What Mainly Distinguishes Men From Brutes And Adults From Children.

This Illustrates An Important Truth, Namely, That The Worse Your Logic, The More Interesting The Consequences To Which It Gives Rise.

The Modern Man Thinks That Everything Ought To Be Done For The Sake Of Something Else, And Never For Its Own Sake.

In The Ordinary Business Of Life Punctuality Is . . . Necessary.

I Hold All Knowledge That Is Concerned With Things That Actually Exist - All That Is Commonly Called Science - To Be Of Very Slight Value Compared To The Knowledge Which, Like Philosophy And Mathematics, Is Concerned With Ideal And Eternal Objects, And Is Freed From This Miserable World Which God Has Made.

Gradually, By Selective Breeding, The Congenital Differences Between Rulers And Ruled Will Increase Until They Become Almost Different Species. A Revolt Of The Plebs Would Become As Unthinkable As An Organized Insurrection Of Sheep Against The Practice Of Eating Mutton.

The Philosophies That Have Been Inspired By Scientific Technique Are Power Philosophies, And Tend To Regard Everything Non-human As Mere Raw Material. Ends Are No Longer Considered; Only The Skillfulness Of The Process Is Valued. This Also Is A Form Of Madness. It Is, In Our Day, The Most Dangerous Form, And The One Against Which A Sane Philosophy Should Provide An Antidote

The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And The More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs.

If A Philosophy Is To Bring Happiness It Should Be Inspired By Kindly Feelings. Marx Pretended That He Wanted The Happiness Of The Proletariat; What He Really Wanted Was The Unhappiness Of The Bourgeois.

But It Is Just This Characteristic Of Simplicity In The Laws Of Nature Hitherto Discovered Which It Would Be Fallacious To Generalize, For It Is Obvious That Simplicity Has Been A Part Cause Of Their Discovery, And Can, Therefore, Give No Ground For The Supposition That Other Undiscovered Laws Are Equally Simple.

[one] Must Look Into Hell Before One Has Any Right To Speak Of Heaven.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

Government Can Easily Exist Without Laws, But Law Cannot Exist Without Government.

I Would Never Die For My Beliefs Because I Might Be Wrong.

The Wise Use Of Leisure, It Must Be Conceded, Is A Product Of Civilization And Education.

Fervent Religious Believers Sacrifice Pleasures Of The Body, But Instead Enjoy Pleasures Of The Mind, Including The Joy Of Knowing That Those Men Who Didn't Follow Their Religion Would Be Tortured For Eternity.

Brief And Powerless Is Man's Life; On Him And All His Race The Slow, Sure Doom Falls Pitiless And Dark.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

Religions Which Have Any Very Strong Hold Over Men's Actions Have Generally Some Instinctive Basis.

To Abandon The Struggle For Private Happiness, To Expel All Eagerness Of Temporary Desire, To Burn With Passion For Eternal Things-this Is Emancipation, And This Is The Free Man's Worship... United With His Fellow Men By The Strongest Of All Ties, The Tie Of A Common Doom, The Free Man Finds That A New Vision Is With Him Always, Shedding Over Every Daily Task The Light Of Love.

To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

Certain Characteristics Of The Subject Are Clear. To Begin With, We Do Not In This Subject Deal With Particular Things Or Particular Properties: We Deal Formally With What Can Be Said About Any Thing Or Any Property. We Are Prepared To Say That One And One Are Two, But Not That Socrates And Plato Are Two.

They Must Often Change, Who Would Be Constant In Happiness Or Wisdom. Those Who Continually Search For Happiness Will Never Find It. Happiness Is Made, Not Found. To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

A Truer Image Of The World, I Think, Is Obtained By Picturing Things As Entering Into The Stream Of Time From An Eternal World Outside, Than From A View Which Regards Time As The Devouring Tyrant Of All That Is.

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

Whoever Wishes To Become A Philosopher Must Learn Not To Be Frightened By Absurdities.

I Resolved From The Beginning Of My Quest That I Would Not Be Misled By Sentiment And Desire Into Beliefs For Which There Was No Good Evidence.

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

The Atomic Bomb Embodies The Results Of A Combination Genius And Patience As Remarkable As Any In The History Of Mankind.

Fear Is The Main Source Of Superstition, And One Of The Main Sources Of Cruelty. To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

God And Satan Alike Are Essentially Human Figures, The One A Projection Of Ourselves, The Other Of Our Enemies.

The Free Intellect Is The Chief Engine Of Human Progress.

When I Found Myself Regarded As Respectable, I Began To Wonder What Sins I Had Committed. I Must Be Very Wicked, I Thought. I Began To Engage In The Most Uncomfortable Introspection.

Common Sense, However It Tries, Cannot Avoid Being Surprised From Time To Time.

Abstract Work, If One Wishes To Do It Well, Must Be Allowed To Destroy One's Humanity; One Raises A Monument Which Is At The Same Time A Tomb, In Which, Voluntarily, One Slowly Inters Oneself.

Very Few Men Can Be Genuinely Happy In A Life Involving Continual Self-assertion Against The Skepticism Of The Mass Of Mankind, Unless They Can Shut Themselves Up In A Coterie And Forget The Cold Outer World. The Man Of Science Has No Need Of A Coterie, Since He Is Thought Well Of By Everybody Except His Colleagues. The Artist, On The Contrary, Is In The Painful Situation Of Having To Choose Between Being Despised And Being Despicable.

All The Important Human Advances That We Know Of Since Historical Times Began Have Been Due To Individuals Of Whom The Majority Faced Virulent Public Opposition.

...the Nonexistence Of God Makes More Difference To Some Of Us Than To Others. To Me, It Means That There Is No Absolute Morality, That Moralities Are Sets Of Social Conventions Devised By Humans To Satisfy Their Needs.

Education, Which Was At First Made Universal In Order That All Might Be Able To Read And Write, Has Been Found Capable Of Serving Quite Other Purposes. By Instilling Nonsense It Unifies Populations And Generates Collective Enthusiasm.

Christianity Offers Reasons For Not Fearing Death Or The Universe, And In So Doing It Fails To Teach Adequately The Virtue Of Courage.

Is The Set Of All Sets Which Are Not Members Of Themselves A Member Of Itself?

Something Of The Hermit's Temper Is An Essential Element In Many Forms Of Excellence, Since It Enables Men To Resist The Lure Of Popularity, To Pursue Important Work In Spite Of General Indifference Or Hostility, And Arrive At Opinions Which Are Opposed To Prevalent Errors.

Fanaticism Is The Danger Of The World, And Always Has Been, And Has Done Untold Harm. I Might Almost Say That I Was Fanatical Against Fanaticism.

The Tendency Of Our Perceptions Is To Emphasise Increasingly The Objective Elements In An Impression, Unless We Have Some Special Reason, As Artists Have, For Doing The Opposite.

Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point.

No Man Treats A Motorcar As Foolishly As He Treats Another Human Being. When The Car Will Not Go, He Does Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin; He Does Not Say, 'you Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.' He Attempts To Find Out What Is Wrong And To Set It Right.

Remote From Human Passions, Remote Even From The Pitiful Facts Of Nature, The Generations Have Gradually Created An Ordered Cosmos [mathematics], Where Pure Thought Can Dwell In Its Natural Home.

One Must Expect A War Between U.s.a. And U.s.s.r. Which Will Begin With The Total Destruction Of London. I Think The War Will Last 30 Years, And Leave A World Without Civilised People, From Which Everything Will Have To Build Afresh - A Process Taking (say) 500 Years.

The World That We Must Seek Is A World In Which The Creative Spirit Is Alive, In Which Life Is An Adventure Full Of Joy And Hope, Based Rather Upon The Impulse To Construct Than Upon The Desire To Retain What We Possess Or To Seize What Is Possessed By Others.

There Is No Difference Between Someone Who Eats Too Little And Sees Heaven And Someone Who Drinks Too Much And Sees Snakes.

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

Broadly Speaking, We Are In The Middle Of A Race Between Human Skill As A Means And Human Folly As An End.

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

I Do Not Pretend That Birth Control Is The Only Way In Which Population Can Be Kept From Increasing. There Are Others, Which, One Must Suppose, Opponents Of Birth Control Would Prefer.

A Marriage Is Likely To Be Called Happy If Neither Party Ever Expected To Get Much Happiness Out Of It.

There Is Exactly The Same Degree Of Possibility And Likelihood Of The Existence Of The Christian God As There Is Of The Existence Of The Homeric God. I Cannot Prove That Either The Christian God Or The Homeric Gods Do Not Exist, But I Do Not Think That Their Existence Is An Alternative That Is Sufficiently Probable To Be Worth Serious Consideration.

Zeno Was Concerned With Three Problems... These Are The Problem Of The Infinitesimal, The Infinite, And Continuity.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

The . . . Increase In The Power Of Officials Is A Constant Source Of Irritation To Everybody Else.

The Use Of Force Stands In Need Of Control By A Public Neutral Authority, In The Interests Of Liberty No Less Than Of Justice. Within A Nation, This Public Authority Will Naturally Be The State; In Relations Between Nations, If The Present Anarchy Is To Cease, It Will Have To Be Some International Parliament.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

When You Meet With Opposition, Even If It Should Be From Your Husband Or Your Children, Endeavor To Overcome It By Argument And Not By Authority, For A Victory Dependent Upon Authority Is Unreal And Illusory.

There Is A Possibility In Human Minds Of Something Mysterious As The Night-wind, Deep As The Sea, Calm As The Stars, And Strong As Death, A Mystic Contemplation, The “intellectual Love Of God.” Those Who Have Known It Cannot Believe In Wars Any Longer, Or In Any Kind Of Hot Struggle. If I Could Give To Others What Has Come To Me In This Way, I Could Make Them Too Feel The Futility Of Fighting. But I Do Not Know How To Communicate It: When I Speak, They Stare, Applaud, Or Smile, But Do Not Understand.

To Realize The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate To Wisdom.

The Whole Problem With The World Is That Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves, And Wiser People So Full Of Doubts.

The Theoretical Understanding Of The World, Which Is The Aim Of Philosophy, Is Not A Matter Of Great Practical Importance To Animals, Or To Savages, Or Even To Most Civilised Men.

But Courage In Fighting Is By No Means The Only Form, Nor Perhaps Even The Most Important. There Is Courage In Facing Poverty, Courage In Facing Derision, Courage In Facing The Hostility Of One's Own Herd. In These, The Bravest Soldiers Are Often Lamentably Deficient. And Above All There Is The Courage To Think Calmly And Rationally In The Face Of Danger, And To Control The Impulse Of Panic Fear Or Panic Rage.

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World. A Good Society Is Produced Only By Good Individuals, Just As Truly As A Majority In A Presidential Election Is Produced By The Votes Of Single Electors.

In The Part Of This Universe That We Know There Is Great Injustice, And Often The Good Suffer, And Often The Wicked Prosper, And One Hardly Knows Which Of Those Is The More Annoying.

Men Who Allow Their Love Of Power To Give Them A Distorted View Of The World Are To Be Found In Every Asylum: One Man Will Think He Is The Governor Of The Bank Of England, Another Will Think He Is The King, And Yet Another Will Think He Is God. Highly Similar Delusions, If Expressed By Educated Men In Obscure Language, Lead To Professorships Of Philosophy; And If Expressed By Emotional Men In Eloquent Language, Lead To Dictatorships.

The Chicken Noticed That The Farmer Came Every Day To Feed It. It Predicted That The Farmer Would Continue To Bring Food Every Day. Inductivists Think That The Chicken Had "extrapolated" Its Observations Into A Theory, And That Each Feeding Time Added Justification To That Theory. Then One Day The Farmer Came And Wrung The Chicken's Neck. This Inductively Justifies The Conclusion That Induction Cannot Justify Any Conclusion.

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interest Of The Desire To Know.

The Pursuit Of Knowledge Is, I Think, Mainly Actuated By Love Of Power. And So Are All Advances In Scientific Technique.

Each Act Of Cruelty Is Eternally A Part Of The Universe; Nothing That Happens Later Can Make That Act Good Rather Than Bad, Or Can Confer Perfection On The Whole Of Which It Is A Part.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

Never Try To Discourage Thinking, For You Are Sure To Succeed.

To Discover A System For The Avoidance Of War Is A Vital Need Of Our Civilisation.

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death-bed What One Ought To Have Lived For, And Realise Too Late That One's Life Has Been Wasted. Any Passionate And Courageous Life Seems Good In Itself, Yet One Feels That Some Element Of Delusion Is Involved In Giving So Much Passion To Any Humanly Attainable Object. And So Irony Creeps Into The Very Springs Of One's Being.

Aristotle Is The Last Greek Philosopher Who Faces The World Cheerfully; After Him, All Have, In One Form Or Another, A Philosophy Of Retreat.

There Is Something Feeble, And A Little Contemptible, About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths. Almost Inevitably Some Part Of Him Is Aware That They Are Myths And That He Believes Them Only Because They Are Comforting. But He Dare Not Face This Thought, And He Therefore Cannot Carry His Own Reflection To Any Logical Conclusion.

A Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout.

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

There Will Still Be Things That Machines Cannot Do. They Will Not Produce Great Art Or Great Literature Or Great Philosophy; They Will Not Be Able To Discover The Secret Springs Of Happiness In The Human Heart; They Will Know Nothing Of Love And Friendship.

No Rules, However Wise, Are A Substitute For Affection And Tact.

There Are Still Many People In America Who Regard Depressions As Acts Of God. I Think Keynes Proved That The Responsibility For These Occurrences Does Not Rest With Providence.

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

Choose Your Parents Wisely.

It Would Have Been Very Much Better For The World If Britain Had Remained Neutral And The Germans Had Won A Quick Victory. We Should Not Have Had Either The Nazis Or The Communists If That Had Happened.

Neither Acquiescence In Skepticism Nor Acquiescence In Dogma Is What Education Should Produce.

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

It Must Not Be Supposed That The Subjective Elements Are Any Less 'real' Than The Objective Elements; They Are Only Less Important... Because They Do Not Point To Anything Beyond Ourselves.

If We Spent Half An Hour Every Day In Silent Immobility, I Am Convinced That We Should Conduct All Our Affairs, Personal, National, And International, Far More Sanely Than We Do At Present.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

A Life Without Adventure Is Likely To Be Unsatisfying, But A Life In Which Adventure Is Allowed To Take Whatever Form It Will Is Sure To Be Short.

I Have Throughout Been Curious About How Much We Can Be Said To Know And With What Degree Of Certainty Or Doubtfulness.

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

A Life Which Goes Excessively Against Natural Impulse Is... Likely To Involve Effects Of Strain That May Be Quite As Bad As Indulgence In Forbidden Impulses Would Have Been. People Who Live A Life Which Is Unnatural Beyond A Point Are Likely To Be Filled With Envy, Malice And Uncharitableness.

Next To Enjoying Ourselves, The Next Greatest Pleasure Consists In Preventing Others From Enjoying Themselves, Or, More Generally, In The Acquisition Of Power.

The Christian View That All Intercourse Outside Marriage Is Immoral Was, As We See In The Above Passages From St. Paul, Based Upon The View That All Sexual Intercourse, Even Within Marriage, Is Regrettable. A View Of This Sort, Which Goes Against Biological Facts, Can Only Be Regarded By Sane People As A Morbid Aberration. The Fact That It Is Embedded In Christian Ethics Has Made Christianity Throughout Its Whole History A Force Tending Towards Mental Disorders And Unwholesome Views Of Life.

If Everything Has A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just Be The World As God.

We Know Very Little, And Yet It Is Astonishing That We Know So Much, And Still More Astonishing That So Little Knowledge Can Give Us So Much Power.

Have No Respect For The Authority Of Others, For There Are Always Contrary Authorities To Be Found

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